Clinton Delivers Emphatic Plea for Unity

Wednesday

Aug 27, 2008 at 3:30 AM

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton deferred her own dreams on Tuesday and made a soaring appeal for Democrats to support Senator Barack Obama.

PATRICK HEALY

DENVER — With her husband looking on tenderly and her supporters watching with tears in their eyes, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton deferred her own dreams on Tuesday night and delivered an emphatic plea at the Democratic National Convention to unite behind her rival, Senator Barack Obama, no matter what ill will lingered.

Mrs. Clinton, who was once certain that she would win the Democratic nomination this year, also took steps on Tuesday — deliberate steps, aides said — to keep the door open to a future bid for the presidency. She rallied supporters in her speech, and, at an earlier event with 3,000 women, described her passion about her own campaign. And her aides limited input on the speech from Obama advisers, while seeking advice from her former strategist, Mark Penn, a loathed figure in the Obama camp.

But the main task for Mrs. Clinton at the convention — reaffirming her support for Mr. Obama in soaring and unconditional language — dominated her 23-minute speech, and she betrayed none of the anger and disappointment that she still feels, friends say, and that has especially haunted her husband.

“Whether you voted for me, or voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose,” Mrs. Clinton said, beaming as the convention hall burst into applause. “And you haven’t worked so hard over the last 18 months, or endured the last eight years, to suffer through more failed leadership.”

“That was excellent, that was a strong speech,” Mr. Obama said from Billings. “She made the case for why we’re going to be unified in November and why we’re going to win this election. I thought she was outstanding.”

With the television cameras trained tightly on Mrs. Clinton on stage and former President Bill Clinton in a V.I.P. box, Mrs. Clinton smiled broadly at times and punched the air with ferocity during the tough talk against Republicans, while Mr. Clinton lovingly looked on tight-lipped. And yet, reality intrudes: many of her top fund-raisers said this week that they were still refusing to work for Mr. Obama and were angered by their treatment at the convention.

For their part, Obama advisers were full of expectations. Several of them repeated how “gracious” Mrs. Clinton had been this week. Privately, though, aides say they and Mr. Obama have been eager to move on from Mrs. Clinton’s star turn at the convention, which has been a source of melodrama for Democrats who have not entirely healed from the duo’s bruising primary.

Among them are the Clintons themselves: While Mrs. Clinton is in the midst of a “catharsis,” friends say, Mr. Clinton remains angrier than people realize about the Obama campaign’s portrayal of his wife as deceitful and of his administration as middling and his political tactics as, at times, racially charged. Friends have been urging Mr. Clinton — who speaks on Wednesday night — to move on, and counseling the couple to focus their energy and emotions on Mr. McCain.

At one point in her speech, though, Mrs. Clinton herself paid homage to her husband’s successes — in one sense, making up for the absence of praise from Mr. Obama.

Mrs. Clinton also provided some of the night’s sharpest lines of attack on Mr. McCain in her convention speech. “It makes sense that George Bush and John McCain will be together next week in the Twin Cities, because these days they’re awfully hard to tell apart,” she said, referring to the site of the Republican National Convention.

Introduced by her daughter, Chelsea, who called her “my hero,” Mrs. Clinton was met with a lengthy, loud standing ovation. She sprinkled her opening remarks with personal touches, delighting the crowd by thanking “my supporters, my champions — my sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits,” a reference to her signature sartorial style.

“You never gave in, you never gave up, and together we made history,” Mrs. Clinton said.

With delegates waving banners that read “Hillary” or “Obama” on one side and “Unity” on the other, Mrs. Clinton encouraged supporters to rally behind Mr. Obama for the sake of struggling Americans she met during the campaign.

“I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me?” Mrs. Clinton said. “Or were you in it for that young marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage?”

Mr. Clinton became teary at several points during his wife’s speech, and even Mrs. Clinton, who has been so steady this week, seemed to grow misty a couple of times as she thanked her supporters profusely and recalled some of the Americans she met along the trail. Some parts of the speech devoted to Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain, in turn, had a bit of a workmanlike quality, but on the whole her speech echoed with the emotional lyricism that she showed in June when she dropped out of the race and told supporters, “It would break my heart if, in falling short of my goal, I in any way discouraged any of you from pursuing yours.”

Far from giving a valedictory at the Democratic convention, Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said she wanted the speech to reflect the leverage that she retains in the Democratic Party — that she, far more than Mr. Obama, has the influence to move her supporters to his side. (The Clinton camp did not even provide a final draft to the Obama campaign well in advance of delivery, working on it until the last minute.)

At the same time, advisers said, Mrs. Clinton wanted to ensure that her star turn at the convention could never be portrayed as insufficiently enthusiastic, should Mr. Obama lose the election in part because swaths of her supporters ultimately did not vote for him. Mrs. Clinton is almost certain to run for president in 2012 if Mr. Obama fails this time, several Clinton advisers said Tuesday, and any such plan could possibly founder if the Clintons’ negative feelings show through this year.

The reports of friction between the Clinton and Obama camps were officially dismissed by both sides, and there were signs some Clinton supporters were giving up the fight, with a pro-Clinton demonstration Tuesday petering out.

Mrs. Clinton also had a brief, backstage chat with Michelle Obama at an Emily’s List event earlier; aides to both described the conversation as friendly. During her remarks, meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton made a warm gesture to encourage women in the room to embrace Mrs. Obama.

“Wasn’t Michelle Obama terrific last night?” Mrs. Clinton said to applause. “I know a little bit about how the White House works, and if the president is not exactly on our side, call the first lady — and Michelle Obama will answer that phone.”

“It’s not just about politics,” she said, referring to the distinctive struggles women face as candidates. Her tone broke from its determined cadence and became, for a second, slower and almost hushed. “It’s really personal,” she said.

Still, there were displays of support for Mrs. Clinton that had nothing to do with unity. In her speech on Tuesday at the Emily’s List event, one woman shouted from the audience, “Hillary in 2012!” Mrs. Clinton did not appear to hear the remark; the woman, Karin Schumacher of Denver, had volunteered for Mrs. Clinton, and said she planned to support Mr. Obama.

In the convention hall, several women said they were bracing for a difficult 24 hours as Mrs. Clinton fills a supporting role rather than the lead part.

When Kelly Friendly, a Clinton supporter from Wellesley, Mass., was asked if she would vote for Mr. Obama, she said, referring to Mrs. Clinton: “Absolutely. She just told us to, didn’t she?”

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